Fifty Shades of Snark—Part the First

Everywhere I look this week I see “inner goddess” sleep masks and other indications that the BDSM Lite™ phenomenon has hit the shelves. Everywhere. Supermarkets appear to be selling ball-gags as Valentine’s gifts. What exactly does a ball-gag say in the language of flowers? Shut the hell up? And why can’t I have a sleep mask that says “Inner French Existentialist Feminist?” I did ask at Tesco today, but they just looked at me blankly.

Amongst my writer friends we’ve hashed and rehashed why the worst books ever to have been written in the English language have become the publishing success they are. So much so, that even the abbreviation of FSOG is too much. We call them “The Books That Shall Not Be Named.” I take that one step further and dub them the Voldemort of Publishing.

How, how, how could work as chronically bad as this become such a sensation? I can’t walk into Waterstones without tripping over the legion of other books with greyscale, vaguely suggestive covers with numbers and letters in the titles, as everyone with a smutty story or three jumps on the Shady bandwagon.

And then, of course, there is the movie. Out on Valentines Day, as if we needed another reason to avoid that false and commercial festival.

Fortunately, the Books that Shall Not Be Named, (once poorly written Twilight fan fiction), have now hit the silver screen. At first, I thought that FSOG the Movie would be the sort you’d take your boyfriend too only if you wanted him to dump you.

But no. Clearly, they’re crime thrillers, right?

Fifty Shades has this wonderful trailer, which correctly portray Mr Grey as the obvious psychopathic serial killer he is:

Why stop there. I think Donald Belasarius, he of JAG and NCIS fame, should direct the next Fifty Shades movie. In fact, we could have Fifty Shades of NCIS!

The victims were all patients at this clinic. But I’ve checked with my old school chum Dr David “Mummy” Goose. The General Medical Council of Great Britain has never heard of John “The Doctor” Flynn.

Deep Voice:

And they know Ana Steele is next…

[Grey with his arm around Ana. Ana looks scared.]

Gibbs:

We have to get her out of there.

Deep Voice:

This Valentine’s day, prepare yourself for a massacre. . .

Ziva David:

I can kill him for you. Just lemme do some Krav Maga…

Gibbs:

No, he’s made us. . .

Deep Voice:

The greatest crime thriller of 2015 . . .

Ziva:

Maiming? Hard to rape with your dick cut off?

Deep Voice:

Will Ana survive the Red Room of Pain?

[cut to the Red Room of Pain]

Grey:

I exercise control in all things Ms Steel.

[frightened breathing, fade to black]

<heart beat>

<heart beat>

<heart beat>

Grey:

Shhhhhhhh. Don’t say a word.

And then, of course, you can have these “teaser scenes.” I apologise for resurrecting the character of Ziva David for these little teasers. In my defence, it was the last time I watched NCIS before getting rid of my TV in order to write.

Meanwhile back at headquarters:

Dinozzo:

You brought Grey in?

Gibbs:

Ziva’s with him in the interview room now.

Dinozzo

<rises from desk>

I’m off to the observation room. This I GOTTA see through a one-way mirror —

Gibbs:

<Blocks Dinozzo’s path>

No one goes in there. I mean it. No one. The fewer eyes on this the better.

McGee:

<looking up from computer while still typing code maniacally>

Boss, I turned off the cameras in the interrogation room and fried the recording equipment, just like you asked.

Gibbs:

<Badass little smile.>

Dinozzo:

Gibbs? Will she break him? Will he talk?

Gibbs:

<Larger badass smile.>

Personally, though, my own puny efforts at Fifty Shades of Snark are eclipsed by this following clip, which I must warn you is not safe for work. Viewed, however, in the privacy of your own home, this erotic classic never, ever gets old.